Update: As of 7PM ET, all links are now working. Please try now to download the new Bing suite for Windows Phone 8. It's not restricted to the US.

Today, Microsoft has pulled the sheets off of a new suite of apps based around the Bing search engine. Simply called Bing Apps, the collection of four apps includes Sports, News, Weather and Finance, including Live Tile support for Windows Phone 8 devices.

Based off of the same suite of apps for its Windows 8 OS, the new applications bring all of the latest news right to the Start screen, continuing the “glance and go” usability that Windows Phone users have become accustomed to. Indeed, this is the first time we’ve seen some real parallels between the desktop and mobile OS drawn and it should make using the two systems more seamless than before for new customers.

Watch our first-look video of the new apps in action and enjoy the gallery of screenshots after the break.

Video Tour: Bing News, Weather, Finance and Sports

Bing News

“Want to keep tabs on what’s happening in the world? The Bing News app for Windows Phone has you covered. With the new app, you have one comprehensive experience to keep tabs on the latest headlines and videos of breaking news. And the app is customizable so you can track specific story categories, topics, or news sources that matter to you. You can even rearrange the headline clusters so that the news that matters most to you is at the top.”

The Bing News app is a straight port of the Windows 8 client and is well optimized for Windows Phone. Users can adjust the font size to their liking, enable the Live Tile, and restrict background data usage to only Wi-Fi. Wide tiles support is included with HD level graphics for images.

The app is relatively fast and fluid to use (data can take a moment to download) and with optional Breaking News alerts, users can stay abreast of all the latest happenings. The app lacks any lockscreen support or the ability to share an article, which is something Microsoft will hopefully build upon in later releases.

Bing Finance

“Keep tabs on your portfolio and gauge performance of your stocks at a glance with the Bing Finance app which include financial news, market info, watchlists, timely US stock updates and customizable interactive charts.”

Like Bing News, Bing Finance acts as market hub on your Windows Phone. The Live Tile (wide supported) shows the latest DOW and NASDAQ numbers (one on each side) with a graph and numbers for a quick view. Users can customize the Watchlist with specific companies and the News section is similar to the Bing News app with font control.

Bing Weather

“Want to know to know whether you need to grab an umbrella? Now you can stay a step ahead of the weather with an overview of conditions including temperature, precipitation and wind.”

Everyone loves weather apps and Bing Weather is a solid port of their desktop version. The app features a live tile (sadly, not wide) with the latest temperature, current conditions and the day’s high and low. Launching the app will show more in-depth information like “feels like” temperature, humidity levels, wind and more. Swiping to the right reveals daily, hourly and a collection of weather maps, including Temperature, Doppler, Precipitation and cloud cover, optimized for regional and national views.

The app is well designed and while it can’t compete against the more full-featured pay apps on Windows Phone, it’s a really well done weather client. Once again, no lockscreen support in v1.0 is a bit of a letdown but we imagine such a feature could come in later updates.

Bing Sports

“The Bing Sports app is your personal sports companion letting you stay on top of the sports and teams that you care about. You can swipe through to see the recent scores, top sports headlines, game videos, photos, schedules, standings, extensive statistics and much more across most major sports.”

Like Bing News and Finance, Bing Sports brings you all the latest in world competitions. From the scoreboard (currently MLB in the US) to News to slideshow to videos, the app is sure to keep the sports enthusiast busy. Like Bing Finance, you can add your favorite franchises to the ‘my teams’ pivot to easily track their latest happenings.

Quick thoughts

Overall, Microsoft has done an admirable job with these well-polished apps. They serve as a reminder to consumers of the similarities between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and represent a sign of things to come as those two operating systems begin to merge in 2014.

We can envisage many of these apps coming pre-installed on forthcoming Windows Phones and it should provide a great out-of-the-box experience for new customers who want core apps at their fingertips.

When to get them?

Bing Apps are now available with their respective links and QR codes listed above. Note: these apps are very "fresh" to the Store, so if it says "Not available" for your device, try again in a little while until it hits all servers.

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Daniel maybe you should not be so good at your job and informing people asap. They don't understand that these apps were just published and might take a little time before you can download. Geez.. patience ppl
Update: MJF posed the same question to BenThePCGuy and they are investigating the issue.

I love WPCentral, I hope you guys get some kind of financial support from MS because seriously you are one of the main media group that play a very important role in expanding and exploring W8 and WP. Great job a thousand thumbs up.

almost EVERYONE here whining and crying how its not available on<instert your device> in <insert your country> /optional <insert your firmware update> !!
for fucks sake....give it time !!! or try again......(it says not available...might need updating in the US too)
when apps get released its the sole responsibility of users to come to wpcentral and cry !!!

I actually agree with this. Since news, local deals, movies, etc are part of the Bing search (button) it would be even better if that was customizable, and allowed you to pick what you see. News, Weather, Sports, etc.

Here's something interesting. Take a look at the splash screen for Bing News in the screenshots posted on the store. The word Bing isn't in its usual font. Could this be an early sign of the rumored logo change?

This is AWESOME! Thanks Microsoft
I remember seeing someone tweeting MS asking for these Windows 8 apps to be made available on WP8 too and I tough: "that would be cool!"
I'm happy to see that this wish came true for us WP8 users

The 8.1 preview is also available in English...but not in England. It's not the first time Microsoft does this. And it's not restricted to England. They also have stuff in "portuguese" but only available in Brazil (they should call it "brazilian" or "brazilian portuguese" actually, since in Brazil they don't really speak Portuguese as it is spoken in the rest of the World from Portugal to Macao).

What do you mean? I got England on mine. All news are UK based and you have selection of sources from UK as well.
Update: If you talking about that it's not available then I'm using them since yesterday.

Yes absolutely. For me Weather Flow displays 'Haze' most of the time and I have never seen 'Clear' on that tile. Also hate the fact that the lock screen and the tile updates separately at different times.

This is what the bing blog says "Today we are bringing many of those experiences to Windows Phone users around the world" So I think they will come to all markets, just need to have a bit of patience..

Live Tiles. Cant have live tiles with the built in search. Not to mention, cramming a sports score app, news/rss app, weather app (with forcasts and maps), and finance app all into the built in search would be a mess. I only use Weather and News on my tablet, why should i be forced to use finance and sports on my phone?

As separate apps they can be updated more often. Since MS only gets an OS update out once every four years it seems for Windows Phone, the app route is a much better decision. Truth be told, they should split almost everything out into apps like they do on Windows 8/RT.

Every 4 years? You're way off, first the integrated Bing search has been updated and is current being rolled out, second, WP8 will be updated annually and patched nearly quarterly according to Microsoft.

Looking great, but have they finally made the News app work in Denmark? On Windows 8, it has no content in Denmark. It has in Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK - but not in Denmark, which makes it rather useless. Otherwise these apps are great - but Microsoft really needs to work on expanding their services! (I'm beginning to feel a bit like a broken record on this topic).
And I notice they conviently disabled comments on the Bing blog - probably to avoid comments on this issue...

Hopefully it will let me pin my favorite teams from the sports app...I love that feature from the Windows 8 version. Oh and btw...if I hear one more person complain about availability I'm going to turn this car around!!!

Use search key on the right to windows key...u vl get bing search and at the bottom of it u will find scan qr code button..very unusual for a newbie to b here on wpcentral and that too with a comment...

Time to get BING NEWS and get rid of all these other news apps I have installed. THANK YOU MS! Freaking excited. I know its not available for the 925 yet as I just checked but man-o-man am I happy to finally see this! Thanks WPC for the tip!

As a WP developer here's my take on it
In the US, WP7 holds only 27% at this point and shrinks every month. Any new development makes the most sense to be done using the async pattern in WP8 SDK. You have to take the long way to get something cross compatible.
Now, while WP8 has 73% of WP market share we onlky have a small percentage of market share of the big piece of the pie. It just doesn't make sense to write target 7 in most cases unfortunatley.
That's my two cents.

Agreed. It's unfortunate, but I also think it was a very neccessary changeover for Microsoft. The new codebase will allow them to move forward, and some users had to (temporarily) be left behind. Hopefully they will pick up WP8 phones at some point and be able to enjoy new apps again. The Lumia 520 is pretty damn good for under $100 in the meantime, though I understand not everyone is on AT&T.

Another unfortunate side effect is that shiwtching to the new platform also cost MS about a year of feature updates... making them look like they have positively stood still for the last year. All their work went into recoding eveything for the new codebase, rather than implementing the many new features that are needed to make this OS truly competitive. I really hope that WP8.1 will show that they have not been idle... but I am concerned.

You can't expect people to rely on half the BS comments that are down here. If it truely is a bug, it should be updated in the article. Too many down here spouting off for everyone to read every comment.
Personally, I would like to see articles come out AFTER things are live and working...

FINALLY. Weave is the only decent news aggregate app I've seen on WP, and that app is too heavy for my taste. My #1 complaint about Windows Phone 8 has always been no Bing News. I'll have to find something else to dislike about the OS, but it might be hard.

I really wish MS would synchronize the releases on their Servers. Honestly, us it so hard to load them all up and THEN announce the software's availability. I'm in the US, and since I'm apparently not in the same VIP Express Server as WPCentral writers are ;-) I'm still told I can't have it (stamps feet in childlike frustration)

They really need to work on the live tile for the sports app. When I pin my team the three things I care about, What was their previous results? When is the next game? And what position are they on the ladder? Stop using flips and a heap of text and just shove it all on an image. 2 minute mock up - http://goo.gl/8YvrhV

I have it too but the live tile is useless (unless I'm using it wrong it's just a static image, maybe with a flip). MyFootball has a great live tile (what I based the mock on) but it's pretty unreliable.